Merciful
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Rating : X-rated for the ending
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and RTD
Spoilers: General, but specific for 'Cyberwoman
Summary: When Ianto starts to go home on time, Jack is suspicious and decides to check up on him.
Part of the 'Love and War' sequence.
Author's Note: I seem to be coming down with a cold or something, since my head is stuffed full of cotton-wool and I can't focus straight on the screen. So much for my promised fics. Sorry guys, you'll have to make do with this one, which is one I started a while back but finally managed to finish. Hopefully I'll get over whatever this is and get back to writing soon.
Ianto Jones knocked on the door frame to Captain Harkness’ office and waited until Jack registered his presence. “I’ll be going now, sir.”
Jack looked up from the report he was reading and gave him a slightly quizzical smile. “Good to see you taking my suggestion of going home on time every now and then seriously, Ianto.”
Ianto swallowed the sarcastic smile that threatened. “As you pointed out, sir, all work and no play…”
Jack lifted his hands. “Hey, at no point was the word ‘dull’ mentioned,” he grinned. “You just seemed to spend more time here than the others. I’d prefer if you had some kind of life.”
Ianto kept his face impassive, as he suppressed the retort that immediately leapt to mind. This is my life. I have nothing else and you’re trying to take even this away from me. I won’t let you beat me, though. “No problem, sir. I’ll be off then.”
“Mind you, if you don’t have anything planned…”
Damn. Ianto very definitely had something planned, but there was no way in hell he was going to let Harkness know what it was. “Nothing special, sir. Just a quiet night in. Can I do something for you?”
Jack was giving him one of those disconcertingly penetrating gazes that always made you search your conscience. Sheer self-preservation had made Ianto armour himself against that particular weapon in Jack’s arsenal very early on so he returned the look with one of mild curiosity. After a moment, Jack smiled and waved a hand.
“Nah, it’ll keep. Go and enjoy yourself.”
Ianto inclined his head politely before turning to leave. Jack waited until he was sure Ianto had cleared the Hub before leaving his office and making for Tosh’ workstation. Sitting down, he booted up her computer, calling up the CCTV images.
Jack leaned forward. “Now let’s see what our Mr Jones thinks is a quiet night in.”
OOO
Ianto drove his car to the lock-up and after checking that it was as deserted as it looked, he swapped the car for the black van inside. He changed quickly out of his suit and into clothes more practical for what he was going to do. Leather was better at turning or blunting the force of claws and teeth, and the dark grey and black made it more difficult to spot him. He had become so used to the suits that it had taken him a week or so to settle into the leathers again and he was profoundly glad that there was no chance of Jack seeing him in the skin-hugging outfit. He was still extremely ambivalent about how he felt about the Captain's effect on his hormones and he didn't need any more distractions in his life. He was supposed to hate Captain Jack Harkness after Lisa and that was how it was going to stay and his disobedient body would have to learn to live with the fact.
He just wished it would listen to him.
He checked the equipment in the van and drove off. He'd spotted Weevil markings in one of the side-alleys during a clean-up yesterday and he was pretty certain that it was an active hunting-ground. He'd need to move fast before there were any more victims. It didn't take long for him to reach the spot and find a parking space and he got out to check the area out. As he'd feared, there were about half-a-dozen homeless people huddled in the doorways. Using his old community police ID he moved them on and put enough of a growl in his voice to make sure that they wouldn't be back that night.
Pulling out one of the blood packs from the van, he located a suitable doorway and settled down. Using one of his knives, he slit the pack and watched the blood gush out across the pavement and into the gutter. It wouldn't take long to drip down into the drain and the scent would be spreading out on the still air. He relaxed back into the shadow of the doorway, adopting the boneless slump of a drunk while extending his senses for the first hint that his bait had been taken. If this pack had already found pickings, they wouldn't come and he'd have to repeat this tomorrow night.
The most difficult part was the waiting. He had to remain completely relaxed and yet be ready to move at any moment. Stiffening up was a lethal thing to do. He'd had good teachers but that had been years ago and his skills had become blunted since he'd joined Torchwood and adopted the persona of an administrator. He'd been appalled by how badly he'd coped with his trip into the countryside with the rest of the team. He'd let himself get taken out by a bunch of lunatic amateurs, for God's sake!
Not that he was surprised that he had been freaked by the situation. When he had opened that door and seen all the body-parts, he had flashed back to the Tower and the charnel house it had become once the Cybermen had invaded. And cannibals had been a new one, even for him. He had accepted the entire debacle as a wake-up call for him to pull himself together. He'd trained as much as he could, but the lack of a sparring partner was a problem. Still, these little night missions were helping to bring him back up to speed again.
Movement further down the alleyway brought his attention back to the here and now. It didn't take long for him to confirm that it was Weevils and not some opportunistic mugger. He could see them as darker forms moving in the shadows and heard them snuffing the air, scenting the blood trail he had laid down. He kept still. Even as a pack they were cautious creatures and he was beginning to suspect that they had some way of communicating. When he had first started it had been relatively easy to take them down but lately they'd been more organised in their hunts.
He must have passed some test because the first Weevil came into view, nose moving as it homed in on the blood. Ianto wondered what it must be like to be some homeless person waking up to see such a creature coming towards you, fangs gleaming in what little light there was. He killed that thought immediately and starved his imagination, concentrating on the practicalities. He had to tread a fine line between letting the first Weevil get too close and losing the others if he attacked too soon. He was having to cut it closer and closer to the bone and before long he'd have to change his tactics completely. It would be a lot easier if he didn't have to worry about the others finding out what he was up to.
The Weevil made a mock rush towards him. Ianto remained where he was and hoped that that would be enough to bring the others out because he knew the next attack would be for real. To his relief, two more Weevils came into view and the first one looked back at them with a growl. They fanned out and Ianto started to count under his breath, thanking his luck that the Weevils weren't particularly bright and tended to stick to standard tactics.
He moved at the same moment that they did, rolling fluidly under their attacking rush. Their yarring shrieks cut off as they were abruptly confronted with something a lot more dangerous than the easy victim they had been expecting. Ianto had his daggers out and had finished off the first Weevil before they had recovered from their surprise, one blade severing the spinal chord at the base of the neck while the second stabbed through the main vein in the neck; a weakness the Weevils shared with Humans.
If he had been out with the Team, he would have been expected to use a gun, which would have put him at a disadvantage. He'd received some training with guns, but long before that he had been learning how to use swords and knives, courtesy of the teachers he had found wherever - and whenever - Godfather had taken them. It had been easy to pass such tutoring off as a way of keeping fit and blending in with the society they were in. It hadn't been until one of his tutors had complimented Godfather on his skill and observed that he would make an excellent warrior that he had been hauled to one side and given a stern lecture on how weapons should be used as a last resort.
Ianto wasn't going to quarrel with that idea. Given half a chance he much preferred to come up with a solution that didn't involve weapons, since that generally left more of a mess than other methods. Still, they had their place, especially when you were faced with an enemy you didn't have a common language with and one which saw you as a meal, to boot. Knives were actually more effective than guns when you were battling Weevils in the back streets of Cardiff, since they were silent and didn't attract unwanted attention, while still doing lethal damage. The only real drawback was that you had to get in close to use them.
He switched his attention to the second Weevil and reached it while it was still recovering from the shock of seeing the pack leader go down. It yowled when it slashed at him and he stabbed it in the arm and twisted the blade, but he had to dodge the other clawed hand and slide closer to use the other dagger on the throat. He saw the third Weevil rushing in and he disengaged swiftly, drawing back and keeping the fatally wounded Weevil between him and the new attacker. The sound of claws scratching against concrete warned him of a new danger behind him and he spun around in time to see the other two Weevils starting to outflank him.
Five! That was a bigger pack than he'd seen so far and it meant that he was going to have to work a lot harder to get away in one piece. He was going to depend on his speed and agility to get out of this. He cursed the overconfidence that had made him leave the gun in the van. Knives were all very well, but they were close-contact weapons. Then there was no more time to think as the Weevils came after him in a synchronised rush and Ianto had to focus everything he had on staying alive. One of the Weevils made a mistake early on and paid for it, but the last two were more cunning and kept him constantly on the defensive with feints and rushes that were calculated to wear him down. He also realised they were trying to back him into a corner where his ability to dodge their attack would be limited.
He was aware of the first faint tug of exhaustion at the back of his mind and knew he had to bring this to an end before he started to really tire. He deliberately started to slow his responses to the Weevil attacks, making it look like they were wearing him down faster than was the truth. One of the Weevils started to become bolder, lunging closer and trying for a wound that would take him down. Ianto played the part for a little longer, then pretended to stumble and go down on one knee.
The Weevil gave a screech and lunged, only to find its 'exhausted' prey coming back up off the ground in a lethal drop kick that sent it staggering back to fall on its back. Ianto had come after it and got in a kill strike before it had time to recover the breath knocked out of it and then he kept going, in a lunge that took out the final Weevil while it was still trying to figure out what had happened.
Ianto stood where he was for a moment, his chest heaving as he slowly let the adrenalin seep out of him. That had been a lot closer than any of the other incidents and he had the sense to realise that he had to reconsider what he was doing and find some other way of taking out the Weevils that were starting to infest Cardiff. He was turning to go back to the van and make a start at cleaning up the site when something hit him from behind and he went down hard enough to send his senses spinning. At the same time he felt teeth and claws tear into his arm and side and he screamed at the unexpected agony. He got a blurred impression of another Weevil worrying at his arm and sheer survival instinct made him bring up his other hand to stab at the creature's face.
Shock had robbed him of a lot of his strength but the blade scored across leathery skin and just missed an eye. The Weevil flinched away, letting his arm go, and Ianto stabbed again, aiming for the throat but more interested in making the Weevil retreat enough for him to regain his footing. The strategy worked but Ianto found it a lot more difficult to get back up as the ground seemed to have becoming spongy and uneven, so that Ianto floundered rather than leapt to his feet. He took a couple of steps back, then lost his balance as he tripped over one of the dead Weevils. This time he made no attempt to get back up, gripping the dagger with his good hand and bracing himself for the coming attack.
The Weevil had worked itself up into a frenzy and was practically foaming as it finally leapt for him. Ianto braced himself then nearly leapt out of his skin when there was a fusillade of shots. The Weevil jerked from the impact but inertia meant that it still landed on Ianto, although there was no doubt that it was already dead and he was no longer in any danger. It took a couple of seconds for Ianto to register the fact that he was, in fact, still alive. Confused, he looked around, then felt a jolt of adrenalin when he saw Jack standing a little way up the alleyway. He was lowering his gun and staring at him, looking like he wanted to tear something apart.
Bugger, Ianto thought a little shakily. He had no idea how Jack had turned up when he had, but he had to admit that it had probably saved him from a bad mauling. He shoved the dead weight of the Weevil off him and rolled over onto hands and knees before cautiously pushing himself to his feet. A quick look told him that he was probably going to need stitches on both his arm and side. The bleeding was sluggish, though, which also told him that nothing major had been damaged. It just hurt like hell. He sheathed one dagger and went over to pick the other one up from where he had dropped it. He realised that bending over to pick it up had been a mistake when the world did a graceful pirouette around him and he felt himself falling. His slide to the ground was abruptly halted by arms wrapping themselves around him.
"What-?" Confused, he looked around and realised that Jack had somehow managed to get from the top of the alleyway to his side without his noticing. "Oh, it's you. Lemmego," he slurred, pushing ineffectively at Jack's chest.
"If I let you go, you'll fall straight on that empty head of yours," Jack said in a tight, controlled voice.
Ianto blinked and struggled to get him into focus. "'m fine. I don't need your help," he said carefully.
That seemed to snap Jack's tenuous self-control and he shifted his grip to shake Ianto until the Welshman's head spun and the world lost itself behind a cottonwool haze. "Are you crazy?" Jack shouted. "Six Weevils, Ianto! Six! If I hadn't followed you, you'd be dead and we wouldn't even have known what had happened to you! If you want to commit suicide, there are easier ways of doing it."
The shaking was making his side hurt even more and Ianto could feel the nausea rising up inside him. "I wasn't... I wasn't committing suicide," he finally managed to get out. "I didn't expect there to be six of them. They usually hunt in packs of three. They're changing tactics," he mumbled, mostly to himself. "I'll have to remember that." That earned him another shake that made his teeth rattle.
"No more, do I make myself understood?" Jack said in a deadly voice. "You do not risk yourself like this again. Leave it to us."
Ianto felt a surge of anger push back the pain and nausea and this time his shove was strong enough to break himself free of Jack's grip. He glared at the other man as he struggled to keep his balance. "You patronising bastard," he snarled. "What the hell do you think is waiting for me every time when I come to clear up your mess?" He gave a bitter laugh at the look of confusion on Jack's face. "The Weevils are scavengers, Captain. What do you think happens when you walk away and leave bodies? I've been fighting off these things from Day One, so you can take your bloody pats on the head and shove them where the sun doesn't shine!"
He dodged around Harkness and limped for the van, muttering angrily under his breath as he did so. He was blown now, and no mistake. There was no way he was going to be able to persuade the Captain that he'd happened on the Weevils by sheer accident. He briefly wondered if he could get away with retconning him, then realised that there were only so many times he could resort to that tactic without the Captain catching on. No, he'd just have to try and argue his way out of this and hope for the best.
Jack was still trying to wrap his head around what he had just seen. His interest had been piqued the moment Ianto had swapped vehicles, but when he had seen him set up what was obviously an ambush site, alarm bells had sounded inside his head and he had left the Hub to come and join him. He'd arrived in time to see Ianto locked in combat with the Weevils and his first impulse to join in had been pushed aside in silent admiration as he had watched an almost unrecognisable Ianto show a grasp of fighting skills that left him breathless. The arrival of the last Weevil had taken him by surprise almost as much as Ianto but he had managed to shoot it before it could make a killing strike.
Now he had to figure out a way to deal with this new situation. It was blindingly obvious that this wasn't the first time that Ianto had done this, and the willingness to leave at the correct time was now explained. What was still a mystery was why Ianto had suddenly taken to doing this, and Jack realised that he was going to have to have a serious talk with him in the immediate future. That proved to be more difficult than Jack had expected. When he walked over to join Ianto, he found that he had opened the back of the van and dragged out six body bags, plus what looked like a cleaning kit. Jack tried to take the latter away and got something very like a warning growl for his trouble. He sighed.
"Ianto-"
"I clean up the sites. You wouldn't know where to start."
Jack took in the half-dazed look in Ianto's eyes and swallowed the angry retort that threatened. Besides, it had had just enough truth in it to sting. "Maybe not, but I figure I know how to get a Weevil into a body-bag," he pointed out. "I'll do that and you can do the technical stuff. Deal?"
He got a jerk of the good shoulder that he took to be an agreement. Jack was loading the third Weevil when he heard a sound and turned to see Ianto crumpled on the ground. He got to him in a matter of seconds and checked him anxiously. It looked like he had passed out, and Jack assumed that it was probably shock from his wounds. His pulse was strong and the bleeding had already stopped, but Jack knew that the wounds would need seeing to as soon as possible. He got the other Weevils into the back of the van as quickly as possible, then looked around the site and decided to leave it. There was still blood but rain was promised for later on tonight and if anything was found, they would probably assume that it was the result of some drunks fighting.
They got back to the Hub in record time and Jack carried Ianto inside and up to the small infirmary where he laid him out on one of the two beds. He'd pulled off the heavy leather jacket and started to pull at the dark grey t-shirt underneath when he was stopped by a hand on his wrist and he realised that Ianto was awake again.
"I can take care of myself," Ianto said shortly, shoving Jack's hand away.
Jack staggered back then recovered and came back to grab Ianto by the chin as he struggled to sit up on the bed, forcing him to meet his own angry gaze. "You only have one good arm and the other one is stiffening up. You can't afford to let infection set in."
"Then I'll go to A&E," Ianto snapped. "It won't be the first time."
Jack did his best to throttle back the frustrated anger he was feeling. "Why run that risk, for God's sake? I'm perfectly capable of carrying out basic stuff like this and Owen can check you out in the morning-"
"I don't want you touching me!" It came out as an explosive shout as Ianto shoved at him again.
For a moment Jack was tempted to shout back, but then he got a look at the turmoil in Ianto's eyes and something clicked inside. He smiled lazily, laughing inwardly at the cautious look that immediately earned him, and moved in to pin Ianto back down on to the bed. He doubted that he would have been able to do it if Ianto hadn't been under par and hurting, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He leaned in until his face was inches away from Ianto's.
"Nervous, Ianto? Now why wouldn't you want me to touch you, hmm? Is it because you can't trust yourself?"
He had his lips so close that he was almost brushing them against Ianto's. Another centimetre and they would be kissing. He remembered the first time he had kissed Ianto, in the red-tinted darkness of the Hub in lockdown, after Lisa had tried to kill him. He remembered the second time, after the cannibals, when he had surprised himself by discovering he had a conscience where this man was concerned. He wasn't sure if he should count the time when Ianto had seduced him for his own reasons and then retconned him, never realising that Jack had regained his memories a short time afterwards, but he wanted to, oh yes. All three times he treasured, far more than he expected to, but he was becoming increasingly obsessed with the need for Ianto to kiss him in full awareness of what he was doing, with no agenda beyond the desire to do so.
Jack could feel the electricity that was building between the two of them. Hell, a ten-day old corpse would have been able to feel it. Every inch of Jack's body was sensitised to the feel of Ianto against him, and the urge to press himself forward that last hairsbreadth of distance and feel those lips against his was nigh-on overwhelming. For a flickering second he saw it; the same hunger flaring into life deep inside Ianto's eyes, blazing up out of nothing like a supernova. Then it was gone again and Ianto's eyes were their usual shuttered ice as he turned his head to one side and shoved again at Jack's chest.
"I don't want you touching me because you're the bastard who had my girlfriend executed," he said in a tight voice. "And the only person I don't trust around here is you!"
Jack gave ground with a laugh that was completely genuine. "Lying to yourself, Ianto? That's not very healthy. If you weren't so scared of losing control you'd let me treat you, but you want me so bad you don't dare let me near you even when you're battered and bruised."
"That isn't true!" Ianto said furiously.
"Then prove it," Jack challenged. "Let me treat those wounds."
Ianto glared at him. "You are so bloody transparent," he growled. "I'm supposed to rise to the bait now, aren't I, and let you treat me to prove a point. Well don't hold your breath." He started to ease himself off the bed, then hunched over with a hiss of pain.
Jack reached out hastily to support him. "Hey, come on, let me help you," he said seriously. "No ulterior motives, okay? The quicker those wounds get seen to, the better."
For a moment Ianto hesitated, but the gouges must have been hurting more than he was letting on because after a minute he nodded and settled back on the bed. Jack wasted no time in stripping off the t-shirt, giving a small sound of sympathy when he saw the messy wounds. Maybe they weren't serious, but they had to be painful as hell. He started on the arm, murmuring an apology as he cleaned the gouges. He could feel Ianto trembling slightly under his hands, but he didn't say anything, turning his head away so that Jack couldn't catch his eye.
"We still need to talk about why you were out there," Jack eventually said. "You were taking a stupid risk and I want to know what justification you thought you had."
Ianto gave him a sideways look. "I told you; I wasn't expecting there to be six of them. Weevils are usually solitary hunters but when they form a pack it's usually no more than three, a dominant female and two males. This was different," he continued, frowning. "Maybe it was because it was a rich hunting ground we hadn't found they were using. I still need to find out so much more about them." He shook his head, then swallowed a gasp as Jack's hand tightened unconsciously on his arm.
"Hunting Weevils is our job, Ianto," Jack said tightly. "I thought you said you didn’t want to go out into the field after the cannibals?" He could see the flicker of anger in Ianto's eyes even at this angle.
"I believe you'll find that my exact wording was that I had no further desire to go out into the field with the Team, sir," he said evenly. "That decision still stands. I work better on my own."
"And to hell with my orders?"
This time he got a full-on level look before Ianto looked away again. "I have never disobeyed a direct order from you, sir, apart from the one where you ordered me to kill Lisa."
Jack did his best to hide his flinch. That had not been one of his finer moments, telling Ianto to go and murder the woman he had risked everything, even his own life, for. It had been an impossible order, which was something he had realised very soon afterwards, which was why he had led the Team back into the Hub. He'd half expected to discover that Lisa had killed Ianto, and the thought had been a cold knife in his heart that had cut through the rage and sense of betrayal. Instead he'd found a scene right out of an over-the-top horror movie, which he and the Team had then added to by shooting the Frankenstein Lisa, even though a moment's thought would have told them that she was no longer any danger, since she had abandoned her lethal form to become a slender human female that was hardly in a state to wreak havoc. Yes, he could firmly put that entire fiasco under the column of 'Really Bad Days When Jack Was An Idiot'.
He cleared his throat. "And if I ordered you never to go out unaccompanied again?" That earned him a thin smile.
"It would make my job of clearing up after you extremely difficult, sir."
Jack wanted to curse but knew that Ianto would see that as a victory. This man had a genius for discovering and making use of loopholes. He decided on a more subtle revenge. "Take off your trousers." That got him a reaction, as Ianto turned his head to give him a startled look. Jack was almost certain that there was a hint of interest under the astonishment, but if there was it was shielded almost immediately. "The gouges in your side go down past the waistband," he explained, not bothering to hide his smile. "You need to drop your trousers so I can do a thorough job."
Ianto had already recovered his poise. "I have no doubt that you do some of your most thorough jobs whenever trousers are dropped, sir."
"Ohhh, that's a line worthy of any bitchy drag-queen," Jack said in amusement, and laughed when he saw the flash of annoyed anger in Ianto's eyes. His laughter faded as he got a good look at the slash marks in Ianto's side. "You could have been killed!"
"I could get killed at any moment in time, sir," Ianto returned calmly. "It could be something as mundane as being run over by a bus or something as bizarre as being eaten by an alien plant. There are no guarantees in life."
"That still doesn't mean you can walk around with eyes shut and a bull's-eye strapped to your back!" Jack shot back. "Here, lie down. I'm going to do a deep cleanse on these."
Ianto did as he was told after a momentary hesitation and Jack set to work, frowning in concentration and being as gentle as he could be. There was a long moment of silence that Ianto suddenly broke.
"I went out on a routine clean-up about a week before we went to Brynblaidd. I heard someone - a woman - screaming, but by the time I got there it was too late and two Weevils had pulled her down. She was critically injured and I couldn't do anything but sit with her while she died. She was nothing like Lisa, but it felt exactly the same," he continued bitterly. "I wasn't quick enough, clever enough, competent enough, and someone was dying in my arms."
Jack opened his mouth, hesitated and then closed it again. Better to wait and see where this was going.
"She was just another homeless girl working the streets. She had heroin tracks up and down her arms and she was nothing but skin and bones. It took me nearly two weeks to find out her name and where she had come from. Sophie Margaret Davies from Wrexham. Father and mother both pillars of the community, apart from the fact that Dad liked a little bit of young meat in his bed every now and then and Mum looked the other way in order to keep him."
Jack sighed. "Makes you proud to be human sometimes, doesn't it?"
Ianto growled something inarticulate. "She came to Cardiff to make something of herself and she wound up dying on the streets at the claws of monsters and there was no-one around to care. She'd have wound up in a pauper's grave with no headstone."
"You paid for her to be buried?" Again he got that almost-shrug.
"Couldn't bury Lisa, so I might as well spend the money on something. Nothing fancy but she has a name on her headstone and I put flowers down."
"So you went hunting the Weevils for revenge?"
"Don't be daft, I'd already killed the Weevils that had taken her," Ianto said scornfully. "It got me thinking, though, and I started to take a closer look at the sites and I realised that the Weevils take a lot more humans than the figures show, but since they're largely down-and-outs or prostitutes, no-one's really noticed."
"So why didn't you come to me and tell me all of this?" Jack demanded.
Ianto snorted. "I did. I put everything in a report, with statistics, probable hunting grounds, patterns of behaviour and requested that we start doing something about it. You sent the report back with 'not worth the manpower' scrawled in the margin."
Jack blinked. "I did?" He struggled to remember the report in question but for the life of him he couldn't recall it. "Well, okay, but I was probably right. We're stretched thin enough as it is without making that kind of commitment for fairly small returns." He felt the body underneath his hands stiffen.
"People are dying, Captain. They're dying a nasty death with no-one caring that they've gone. I might not walk around with my heart pinned quite so ostentatiously to my sleeve as Gwen does, but that doesn't mean I don't care! These are my people. This is my city! Have you finished yet?"
Jack sighed and stood back. "Yeah, I've finished. I just need to get the gel on it and put a dressing in place, but I'll want Owen to see it tomorrow in case a few of those wounds need more attention." He finished off quickly, relieved that they had the advantage of more advanced medical techniques than the outside world. The wound gel he was using was courtesy of the Rift and would promote healing without a scar. Once he had finished, he stepped away again and watched as Ianto pulled up his trousers and put the t-shirt back on. "Go home, Ianto."
"I have Weevils to dispose of first," Ianto pointed out.
"Fine," Jack said in exasperation. "We'll do it together and then you'll go home."
It didn't take them long to throw the Weevils into the alien incinerator they had in one of the lower floors. On one level, Jack felt a faint unease about disposing of the aliens like that, since the jury was still out on how intelligent they were and he had met too many alien races to not know that most of them took the disposal of their dead every bit as seriously as Humans did. On a more practical level, however, there was no way of finding out how Weevils treated their dead, although there were indications that they did have some kind of burial ritual. Unfortunately they had to be practical, so the Weevils they had to kill went into the alien fire. A little to his embarrassment, however, Jack usually found himself silently mouthing one of the more general funerary invocations whenever he was doing it.
Ianto hesitated before turning to leave for the final time. "Are you going to forbid me to go out?" he demanded.
Jack sighed. "I need to think about this. We'll talk about it later. For now, go home and rest. And that is a direct unequivocal order, Ianto."
After a moment, Ianto nodded. "Yes, sir."
After he'd left, Jack went back up to his office and then down into his room. Lying down on his bed, he tried to figure out how he was going to handle this current crisis. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, however, his mind kept going back to the sight of Ianto fighting the Weevils. Dressed in leathers that were moulded to his body and moving in graceful, lethal moves, he had been a hot dream come to life. Jack groaned as he felt himself harden. It seemed as though every time he turned around, Ianto was unwittingly increasing his potential and desirability in Jack's eyes, and the icing on the cake was that the Welshman was very obviously fighting his own desire to jump Jack's bones. Unfortunately, he was winning that particular battle most of the time, which meant that Jack had to find other ways of relieving his sexual frustration.
Jack considered his options. There would probably be several clubs still open that he could hit in search of a willing bed-warmer. The only problem was that none of them had a chance in hell of chasing away the all-too-clear image of a leather-clad Ianto full of fire and lethal passion. With a sigh, Jack unzipped his trousers and took himself in hand, closing his eyes and thinking of all that passion re-channelled and in his bed. It was going to be a frustrating night....
OOO
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
Jack looked up as Ianto gave a perfunctory knock on the door and walked into his office. "How are you feeling today?" he asked.
Ianto shrugged carefully. "Uncomfortable, but I'll live. Owen says that none of the wounds need stitching and the wound gel will take care of any scarring. I'm still fit for duty, Captain."
"You're passed fit for your normal, standard duties, Ianto, but I don't want you to consider doing any of your extra-curricular activities until those wounds are completely healed. Am I making myself clear?"
Ianto was giving him an odd look. "And after that, sir? Am I right in assuming that I can continue?"
Jack gave him a cool smile. "You can continue under the proviso that every time you feel the urge to go out, you come to me and tell me." He paused. "And then we'll go out together."
Ianto stiffened. "I don't need-"
"I don't need to find that one of my people got himself killed in a back alley somewhere while my back was turned," Jack said with finality. "That's the condition. Take it or leave it." He held his breath and crossed his fingers.
After a moment, Ianto nodded. "Very well, sir. I accept your condition."
Jack smiled in relief. "Good. Let me know when you're ready to start training again and I'll set aside some time."
Ianto had been about to leave but he paused and gave Jack a puzzled look. "Sir?"
Jack kept his face impassive with an effort. "Training. If we're going to start going out together, we're going to have to learn one another's moves." He almost smiled at the alarmed look Ianto gave him, but he kept his face straight. "Not that I saw anything to complain about last night, but it's always best to be on the safe side."
"Um, yes, sir," Ianto said before leaving with more haste than his usual grace.
Once he was certain Ianto was safely out of earshot, Jack allowed himself the luxury of a wicked laugh.
OOO
Ianto took a deep breath and tried to tell himself that he wasn't nervous. He did a lousy job of it. In about five minutes, Jack Harkness would be walking in through the door to the practice room he was in and his life was going to get even more complicated than it already was. And really, what with working for a top-secret, alien-hunting organisation, recovering from the repercussions of unleashing his insane, cyber girlfriend on his Team and endangering the Earth, concealing the fact that he was half-alien from everyone while trying to also stymie any attempts that Torchwood made to track down and capture the Doctor, he didn't need any further problems. Especially when the problem was over six foot of physical perfection, with the charisma of a lamia and the sexual appetite of a succubus.
Ianto groaned. He really wasn't helping matters by thinking such thoughts! He should be focusing on the fact that Harkness was a lethal enigma who could smile and flirt with him one moment and then turn around and kill him without so much as a sigh of regret. Ianto had seen the depths of rage and betrayal that Jack could hold, and the great mystery about the affair with Lisa was why Ianto was still alive and in his right mind, rather than a corpse in the Bay or retconned into bovine contentment behind a till at Tesco's.
Captain Jack Harkness was an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle and enamelled with enough charm and personal magnetism to satisfy ten normal men. He was intelligent, witty, focused, charismatic, kind, generous, considerate and athletic. He was also as hard and glittering as a perfectly faceted diamond, lethal, unforgiving, calculating and occasionally boorish. There was always a latent deadliness about him, like a wolf playing at domesticity but with that glint of the wild always in its eyes. He ticked boxes Ianto hadn't even realised were on his list and the urge to drag the man into his bed and act out all the fantasies that haunted those sleeping hours that weren't soaked in blood and screams was getting more and more difficult to silence.
He didn't need this! Dear God, Lisa had been dead for little more than three months. What sort of shallow bastard was he, that he should be wishing that her murderer would take him to his bed? If he were a Catholic, he would never be out of the confessional and the priest would be hard put to put a number on the Hail Mary's he would have to say. Not that God would need to do anything if Jack ever found out that Ianto had one more lie hidden deep inside himself. Given the way that the Captain had reacted to having a Cyberman hidden in his base, Ianto dreaded to think what he would do if he found that the man he had allowed to live after that debacle was only half-human himself.
Shivering, Ianto started to do some warm-up exercises to take his mind off the way his thoughts were spiralling out of control. He normally had better focus than this, but recent events had been piling on the pressure and his control over his empathic abilities was becoming erratic. He still hadn't regained his centre after the events at Brynblaidd. At the time he could explain it away as being the result of the mild concussion he had received at the hands of the cannibals, not to mention the 'tenderising' that had happened afterwards, but he was still having trouble in blocking out the needs and demands of the others and it was playing hell with his attempt to keep aloof and invisible.
Ianto's heart shot up into his throat as the door opened and Jack walked in. How the hell did the man make loose jogging bottoms and a t-shirt look like a designer one-off? Ianto was despairingly aware of the way his pulse had already started to accelerate into a tango-rhythm at the mere sight of the other man. The way Jack's eyes travelled up and down him with that gleam in his eye, and the way he licked his lips and grinned left Ianto torn between wanting to smack his teeth down his throat and ramming him up against the nearest wall while he kissed him senseless.
"So are we going to train or are you going to give in to my irresistible charm and let me drag you to the nearest bed?" Jack asked with a grin.
He already has a hard-on, Ianto noted with something suspiciously close to an hysterical giggle threatening to surface. This was going to be frustrating as hell.
OOO
Three weeks on and they had started to fall into a kind of rhythm. The fun part was that the others - that crack team of experts and geniuses - remained supremely unaware of what was going on right under their noses. By day Ianto was still the man who made the coffee, kept them fed, made sure the Hub didn't disappear under a tide of mess and also made maintaining the Archives, keeping a lid on any problems and monitoring the outside world for any kickback from alien activity look so easy that the others didn't even think about it being done in the first place.
Once the others had gone home, though....
Jack gave a sigh of satisfaction as they got back to the Hub. Another successful hunting expedition, with seven Weevils under their belt. Either the alien hunters were getting warier or the combined team of Jack and Ianto had frightened them off, but the attacks on the homeless definitely seemed to be tapering off. Which was a shame, because that meant he soon might not have the excuse to come out with Ianto, and that was something he was beginning to look forward to with even more anticipation than he had originally thought. There was something intensely refreshing in working with someone who didn't feel the need to argue every little decision that he made, or who always wanted an explanation of why they were doing a certain thing.
Not that Ianto didn't have his moments, but when he did, it was invariably for a reason. And God, he could fight! Jack realised that making him use a gun in the field was the worst thing he could have done, since Ianto was very obviously not as used to one as he was his knives. And just where the hell had he learned to use those with such consummate skill? Some spying meant that Jack already knew that Ianto was half-alien and had spent some of his childhood off-world, but there was something teasingly familiar about some of the moves he used that had Jack wishing that he could just sit down with Ianto, tell him that he knew about his alien heritage and could they just talk? The trouble with that idea was that Ianto was already so spooked around Jack that finding out that Jack knew his greatest secret would probably result in his making a run for it. And one thing that Jack was very certain of was that he didn't want Ianto to do that.
Jack had insisted that they train together so he could be certain that they wouldn't fall over one another in the field. He'd even managed to convince himself that that had been the only motive, right up until the first few sessions. It had taken the entire first session to get Ianto to calm down enough to even think about sparring with Jack. He seemed to have a serious inhibition about using his fighting talents against another human being, even in a training situation, but when Jack had taxed him on it, he had just shrugged and said that his godfather had not approved. That mysterious godfather, who had raised Ianto and his sister after his father had murdered Ianto's mother. Jack really wanted to know about him, as well, but he couldn't find a casual way of mentioning that, hey, he sort of accidentally bugged Ianto when he'd been talking to his sister and found out all this neat stuff and how about another cup of coffee? Jack pulled a face, reflecting that sometimes he could be too clever for his own good.
Still, they were a little further along the path that Jack wanted them to be on, although he couldn't say that Ianto was any more relaxed in his presence. Out in the field was a different thing. Ianto dropped into an entirely different mindset out there; one that secretly delighted Jack. Confident without being cocky, obedient without being deferential, willing to listen but just as firm in voicing an opinion if he thought it was a valid one. Jack just wished he could figure out a way of getting Ianto to keep that part of his personality switched on 24/7, rather than becoming the bloody tea-boy every time one of the Team was around.
The weird thing was that Jack was having the time of his life. He had a long-term project to keep his Machiavellian streak happy, he was constantly amused by the sight and sound of Ianto running proverbial rings around his oblivious Team, and in the night he had the pleasure of going out with a transformed Ianto who was increasingly forgetting that he and Jack were supposed to be bitter enemies. The cherry on the top of all this would be when Jack finally managed to get Ianto into his bed as an eager, participating partner, and he didn't think that would take much longer. Jack was a master at the art of seduction and the training sessions he was insisting they had were escalating the sexual tension between them nicely, to the point where Jack had very nearly pinned Ianto to the floor last time and had him there and then.
I'm a bloody masochist, there's no other explanation for it, Jack decided, watching Ianto lean into the van to grab something. His hand moved almost of its own volition, reaching out to caress the leather-clad arse and squeeze gently. Ianto swore and pulled out of the van and swung around to face him, batting away the offending hand.
"You just can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?" he demanded furiously.
Jack grinned wryly. "Come on, the fact that I haven't jumped you already proves that I'm a candidate for sainthood!" He ran his eyes up and down Ianto's length and ran his tongue over lips that were suddenly dry. "God, what I'd love to do to you..."
Ianto snorted and shoved at him angrily. "You have a one-track mind and that's centred on your bloody cock," he said scornfully.
Jack recovered his balance and grinned brashly as he pounced playfully and dragged Ianto forward so that their hips ground together. "Can I help it if my cock has such good ideas that my common sense gets outvoted?" he teased.
He was going to say some more witty things, but he decided against it. This was probably because that instead of pushing him away again, Ianto had wrapped his arms around him and was kissing him passionately. In fact kissing was a bit of a misnomer, since it felt more like he was trying to eat Jack alive. Never one to be slow on the uptake, Jack was quick to reciprocate, his hands going around to cup Ianto's buttocks and pull him even closer. He found deliciously incontrovertible proof that Ianto was more than interested and he lost no time in getting the leather jacket and t-shirt off him. Ianto was no slouch as well, although Jack was amused to hear the swearing over the amount of layers he was wearing.
"It's more fun taking them off," he confided in a conspiratorial whisper, then yelped as Ianto bit down on his shoulder and growled something that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary in Welsh. "Okay, so maybe it's a little frustrating if you're in a hurry-" He broke off with a gasp as Ianto got his trousers undone and reached inside his pants to grasp his hard-on. "Oh wow, okay, let's see about catching up with you," he managed.
It wasn't anywhere near the most accomplished seduction he had made, Jack reflected. His clothes were only partially off, since Ianto seemed less interested in getting him naked as exposing his cock so he could get at it. Jack's coat, shirt and vest had been dragged off and his trousers and pants shoved down to his knees, but once that was accomplished, Ianto pushed Jack back up against the van and started to thrust against him. Jack had managed to strip Ianto to more of less the same state of undress but rapidly lost interest in taking it further when he felt the cool metal of the van against his back and then the gorgeous hot hardness of Ianto's cock against his own. He thrust back almost mindlessly, groaning at the waves of pleasure jolting through him with every thrust.
Ianto was kissing and biting him with equal ferocity. There was an element of aggression to it that was totally unlike his normal unflappable cool and Jack found such loss of control to be deeply erotic. Jack claimed Ianto's mouth in a deep, passionate kiss, then yelped as Ianto bit down on his lower lip. He retaliated with a nip to the earlobe and grinned at the deep shudder that passed through Ianto in response.
They couldn't keep up such a pace for long, as sexual tensions that had been simmering between them for months were suddenly released. Jack felt Ianto stiffen against him a few seconds before he felt the wild surge of his own release start to boil up inside him. They clung to one another as they shuddered their way through the climax and the aftershocks, the support of the van the only thing helping them stay on their feet.
After a while Jack felt his mind start to grope its way out of the satiated fog it was in. He grinned at the mental image of the sight they must be, both clinging to one another against the van, with their trousers down around their ankles and their combined cum all over their upper bodies. He would have to make sure that the CCTV footage was safely removed so no-one could catch what they had been up to. He felt Ianto stirring against him and leaned forward to kiss him, frowning when Ianto pulled away.
"So I take it that you're not going to respect me in the morning, then?" he asked lightly to cover his disappointment.
Ianto was shaking his head. "This was a mistake," he muttered. He pushed himself away from Jack and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Duw, look at the mess."
Jack laughed and kept leaning against the van. "I'm liking what I see," he said in amusement, although that faded as he watched Ianto pull up his trousers and then hunt around in the van for some wipes. "Ianto..." he said, reaching for the other man.
"Leave it," Ianto said, evading Jack's touch as he finished cleaning himself up and tossing the packet of wipes in his direction. "I'll get started on the Weevils," he continued as he reached down to pick up his t-shirt and pull it on.
Jack watched him revert back to his normal reserved self, with no trace of the passionate creature of a few moments ago. After a moment he sighed and pulled out some wipes to clean himself off. "Say the word and I'll never lay a finger on you again," he said quietly.
Ianto snorted. "You, keep your fingers to yourself? That'll be a first." He started to pull out the first Weevil, then paused, staring down at the dead alien. "I don't pretend to understand what it is about you that makes me act the way I just did. I should hate you. Some days I do still hate you. Other times..." He lifted his gaze to give Jack a troubled look. "I don't love you. Sometimes I even despise you and your flippancy. Then there are days when being around you makes me so crazy that all I can think about is dragging you off somewhere and screwing you senseless." He paused and rubbed at his forehead, looking troubled and tired. "This has to be some kind of weird phase, like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, and I'll get through it like everything else. So don't go thinking there'll be a repeat of what just happened here," he finished warningly.
Jack lifted his hands and did his best to look innocent. It would probably have worked better if he'd got his trousers up off the floor first, but he gave it his best shot. "I wouldn't presume to think anything of the kind," he said. He waited until Ianto had turned his attention back to the Weevil before continuing. "Although I still have some pretty good ideas as to what I'd like to do to you!"
He grinned as Ianto let him know in no uncertain terms what he thought of that idea. So maybe he hadn't got as far with Ianto as he might have liked to believe. He'd still made it past first base, and he had several game plans he could still work on. Whether he liked it or not, Ianto Jones had become Jack's newest and most fascinating hobby, and if there was one thing Jack was certain of, it was that Ianto was going to be a very rewarding obsession.
OOOO
Rating : X-rated for the ending
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and RTD
Spoilers: General, but specific for 'Cyberwoman
Summary: When Ianto starts to go home on time, Jack is suspicious and decides to check up on him.
Part of the 'Love and War' sequence.
Author's Note: I seem to be coming down with a cold or something, since my head is stuffed full of cotton-wool and I can't focus straight on the screen. So much for my promised fics. Sorry guys, you'll have to make do with this one, which is one I started a while back but finally managed to finish. Hopefully I'll get over whatever this is and get back to writing soon.
Ianto Jones knocked on the door frame to Captain Harkness’ office and waited until Jack registered his presence. “I’ll be going now, sir.”
Jack looked up from the report he was reading and gave him a slightly quizzical smile. “Good to see you taking my suggestion of going home on time every now and then seriously, Ianto.”
Ianto swallowed the sarcastic smile that threatened. “As you pointed out, sir, all work and no play…”
Jack lifted his hands. “Hey, at no point was the word ‘dull’ mentioned,” he grinned. “You just seemed to spend more time here than the others. I’d prefer if you had some kind of life.”
Ianto kept his face impassive, as he suppressed the retort that immediately leapt to mind. This is my life. I have nothing else and you’re trying to take even this away from me. I won’t let you beat me, though. “No problem, sir. I’ll be off then.”
“Mind you, if you don’t have anything planned…”
Damn. Ianto very definitely had something planned, but there was no way in hell he was going to let Harkness know what it was. “Nothing special, sir. Just a quiet night in. Can I do something for you?”
Jack was giving him one of those disconcertingly penetrating gazes that always made you search your conscience. Sheer self-preservation had made Ianto armour himself against that particular weapon in Jack’s arsenal very early on so he returned the look with one of mild curiosity. After a moment, Jack smiled and waved a hand.
“Nah, it’ll keep. Go and enjoy yourself.”
Ianto inclined his head politely before turning to leave. Jack waited until he was sure Ianto had cleared the Hub before leaving his office and making for Tosh’ workstation. Sitting down, he booted up her computer, calling up the CCTV images.
Jack leaned forward. “Now let’s see what our Mr Jones thinks is a quiet night in.”
OOO
Ianto drove his car to the lock-up and after checking that it was as deserted as it looked, he swapped the car for the black van inside. He changed quickly out of his suit and into clothes more practical for what he was going to do. Leather was better at turning or blunting the force of claws and teeth, and the dark grey and black made it more difficult to spot him. He had become so used to the suits that it had taken him a week or so to settle into the leathers again and he was profoundly glad that there was no chance of Jack seeing him in the skin-hugging outfit. He was still extremely ambivalent about how he felt about the Captain's effect on his hormones and he didn't need any more distractions in his life. He was supposed to hate Captain Jack Harkness after Lisa and that was how it was going to stay and his disobedient body would have to learn to live with the fact.
He just wished it would listen to him.
He checked the equipment in the van and drove off. He'd spotted Weevil markings in one of the side-alleys during a clean-up yesterday and he was pretty certain that it was an active hunting-ground. He'd need to move fast before there were any more victims. It didn't take long for him to reach the spot and find a parking space and he got out to check the area out. As he'd feared, there were about half-a-dozen homeless people huddled in the doorways. Using his old community police ID he moved them on and put enough of a growl in his voice to make sure that they wouldn't be back that night.
Pulling out one of the blood packs from the van, he located a suitable doorway and settled down. Using one of his knives, he slit the pack and watched the blood gush out across the pavement and into the gutter. It wouldn't take long to drip down into the drain and the scent would be spreading out on the still air. He relaxed back into the shadow of the doorway, adopting the boneless slump of a drunk while extending his senses for the first hint that his bait had been taken. If this pack had already found pickings, they wouldn't come and he'd have to repeat this tomorrow night.
The most difficult part was the waiting. He had to remain completely relaxed and yet be ready to move at any moment. Stiffening up was a lethal thing to do. He'd had good teachers but that had been years ago and his skills had become blunted since he'd joined Torchwood and adopted the persona of an administrator. He'd been appalled by how badly he'd coped with his trip into the countryside with the rest of the team. He'd let himself get taken out by a bunch of lunatic amateurs, for God's sake!
Not that he was surprised that he had been freaked by the situation. When he had opened that door and seen all the body-parts, he had flashed back to the Tower and the charnel house it had become once the Cybermen had invaded. And cannibals had been a new one, even for him. He had accepted the entire debacle as a wake-up call for him to pull himself together. He'd trained as much as he could, but the lack of a sparring partner was a problem. Still, these little night missions were helping to bring him back up to speed again.
Movement further down the alleyway brought his attention back to the here and now. It didn't take long for him to confirm that it was Weevils and not some opportunistic mugger. He could see them as darker forms moving in the shadows and heard them snuffing the air, scenting the blood trail he had laid down. He kept still. Even as a pack they were cautious creatures and he was beginning to suspect that they had some way of communicating. When he had first started it had been relatively easy to take them down but lately they'd been more organised in their hunts.
He must have passed some test because the first Weevil came into view, nose moving as it homed in on the blood. Ianto wondered what it must be like to be some homeless person waking up to see such a creature coming towards you, fangs gleaming in what little light there was. He killed that thought immediately and starved his imagination, concentrating on the practicalities. He had to tread a fine line between letting the first Weevil get too close and losing the others if he attacked too soon. He was having to cut it closer and closer to the bone and before long he'd have to change his tactics completely. It would be a lot easier if he didn't have to worry about the others finding out what he was up to.
The Weevil made a mock rush towards him. Ianto remained where he was and hoped that that would be enough to bring the others out because he knew the next attack would be for real. To his relief, two more Weevils came into view and the first one looked back at them with a growl. They fanned out and Ianto started to count under his breath, thanking his luck that the Weevils weren't particularly bright and tended to stick to standard tactics.
He moved at the same moment that they did, rolling fluidly under their attacking rush. Their yarring shrieks cut off as they were abruptly confronted with something a lot more dangerous than the easy victim they had been expecting. Ianto had his daggers out and had finished off the first Weevil before they had recovered from their surprise, one blade severing the spinal chord at the base of the neck while the second stabbed through the main vein in the neck; a weakness the Weevils shared with Humans.
If he had been out with the Team, he would have been expected to use a gun, which would have put him at a disadvantage. He'd received some training with guns, but long before that he had been learning how to use swords and knives, courtesy of the teachers he had found wherever - and whenever - Godfather had taken them. It had been easy to pass such tutoring off as a way of keeping fit and blending in with the society they were in. It hadn't been until one of his tutors had complimented Godfather on his skill and observed that he would make an excellent warrior that he had been hauled to one side and given a stern lecture on how weapons should be used as a last resort.
Ianto wasn't going to quarrel with that idea. Given half a chance he much preferred to come up with a solution that didn't involve weapons, since that generally left more of a mess than other methods. Still, they had their place, especially when you were faced with an enemy you didn't have a common language with and one which saw you as a meal, to boot. Knives were actually more effective than guns when you were battling Weevils in the back streets of Cardiff, since they were silent and didn't attract unwanted attention, while still doing lethal damage. The only real drawback was that you had to get in close to use them.
He switched his attention to the second Weevil and reached it while it was still recovering from the shock of seeing the pack leader go down. It yowled when it slashed at him and he stabbed it in the arm and twisted the blade, but he had to dodge the other clawed hand and slide closer to use the other dagger on the throat. He saw the third Weevil rushing in and he disengaged swiftly, drawing back and keeping the fatally wounded Weevil between him and the new attacker. The sound of claws scratching against concrete warned him of a new danger behind him and he spun around in time to see the other two Weevils starting to outflank him.
Five! That was a bigger pack than he'd seen so far and it meant that he was going to have to work a lot harder to get away in one piece. He was going to depend on his speed and agility to get out of this. He cursed the overconfidence that had made him leave the gun in the van. Knives were all very well, but they were close-contact weapons. Then there was no more time to think as the Weevils came after him in a synchronised rush and Ianto had to focus everything he had on staying alive. One of the Weevils made a mistake early on and paid for it, but the last two were more cunning and kept him constantly on the defensive with feints and rushes that were calculated to wear him down. He also realised they were trying to back him into a corner where his ability to dodge their attack would be limited.
He was aware of the first faint tug of exhaustion at the back of his mind and knew he had to bring this to an end before he started to really tire. He deliberately started to slow his responses to the Weevil attacks, making it look like they were wearing him down faster than was the truth. One of the Weevils started to become bolder, lunging closer and trying for a wound that would take him down. Ianto played the part for a little longer, then pretended to stumble and go down on one knee.
The Weevil gave a screech and lunged, only to find its 'exhausted' prey coming back up off the ground in a lethal drop kick that sent it staggering back to fall on its back. Ianto had come after it and got in a kill strike before it had time to recover the breath knocked out of it and then he kept going, in a lunge that took out the final Weevil while it was still trying to figure out what had happened.
Ianto stood where he was for a moment, his chest heaving as he slowly let the adrenalin seep out of him. That had been a lot closer than any of the other incidents and he had the sense to realise that he had to reconsider what he was doing and find some other way of taking out the Weevils that were starting to infest Cardiff. He was turning to go back to the van and make a start at cleaning up the site when something hit him from behind and he went down hard enough to send his senses spinning. At the same time he felt teeth and claws tear into his arm and side and he screamed at the unexpected agony. He got a blurred impression of another Weevil worrying at his arm and sheer survival instinct made him bring up his other hand to stab at the creature's face.
Shock had robbed him of a lot of his strength but the blade scored across leathery skin and just missed an eye. The Weevil flinched away, letting his arm go, and Ianto stabbed again, aiming for the throat but more interested in making the Weevil retreat enough for him to regain his footing. The strategy worked but Ianto found it a lot more difficult to get back up as the ground seemed to have becoming spongy and uneven, so that Ianto floundered rather than leapt to his feet. He took a couple of steps back, then lost his balance as he tripped over one of the dead Weevils. This time he made no attempt to get back up, gripping the dagger with his good hand and bracing himself for the coming attack.
The Weevil had worked itself up into a frenzy and was practically foaming as it finally leapt for him. Ianto braced himself then nearly leapt out of his skin when there was a fusillade of shots. The Weevil jerked from the impact but inertia meant that it still landed on Ianto, although there was no doubt that it was already dead and he was no longer in any danger. It took a couple of seconds for Ianto to register the fact that he was, in fact, still alive. Confused, he looked around, then felt a jolt of adrenalin when he saw Jack standing a little way up the alleyway. He was lowering his gun and staring at him, looking like he wanted to tear something apart.
Bugger, Ianto thought a little shakily. He had no idea how Jack had turned up when he had, but he had to admit that it had probably saved him from a bad mauling. He shoved the dead weight of the Weevil off him and rolled over onto hands and knees before cautiously pushing himself to his feet. A quick look told him that he was probably going to need stitches on both his arm and side. The bleeding was sluggish, though, which also told him that nothing major had been damaged. It just hurt like hell. He sheathed one dagger and went over to pick the other one up from where he had dropped it. He realised that bending over to pick it up had been a mistake when the world did a graceful pirouette around him and he felt himself falling. His slide to the ground was abruptly halted by arms wrapping themselves around him.
"What-?" Confused, he looked around and realised that Jack had somehow managed to get from the top of the alleyway to his side without his noticing. "Oh, it's you. Lemmego," he slurred, pushing ineffectively at Jack's chest.
"If I let you go, you'll fall straight on that empty head of yours," Jack said in a tight, controlled voice.
Ianto blinked and struggled to get him into focus. "'m fine. I don't need your help," he said carefully.
That seemed to snap Jack's tenuous self-control and he shifted his grip to shake Ianto until the Welshman's head spun and the world lost itself behind a cottonwool haze. "Are you crazy?" Jack shouted. "Six Weevils, Ianto! Six! If I hadn't followed you, you'd be dead and we wouldn't even have known what had happened to you! If you want to commit suicide, there are easier ways of doing it."
The shaking was making his side hurt even more and Ianto could feel the nausea rising up inside him. "I wasn't... I wasn't committing suicide," he finally managed to get out. "I didn't expect there to be six of them. They usually hunt in packs of three. They're changing tactics," he mumbled, mostly to himself. "I'll have to remember that." That earned him another shake that made his teeth rattle.
"No more, do I make myself understood?" Jack said in a deadly voice. "You do not risk yourself like this again. Leave it to us."
Ianto felt a surge of anger push back the pain and nausea and this time his shove was strong enough to break himself free of Jack's grip. He glared at the other man as he struggled to keep his balance. "You patronising bastard," he snarled. "What the hell do you think is waiting for me every time when I come to clear up your mess?" He gave a bitter laugh at the look of confusion on Jack's face. "The Weevils are scavengers, Captain. What do you think happens when you walk away and leave bodies? I've been fighting off these things from Day One, so you can take your bloody pats on the head and shove them where the sun doesn't shine!"
He dodged around Harkness and limped for the van, muttering angrily under his breath as he did so. He was blown now, and no mistake. There was no way he was going to be able to persuade the Captain that he'd happened on the Weevils by sheer accident. He briefly wondered if he could get away with retconning him, then realised that there were only so many times he could resort to that tactic without the Captain catching on. No, he'd just have to try and argue his way out of this and hope for the best.
Jack was still trying to wrap his head around what he had just seen. His interest had been piqued the moment Ianto had swapped vehicles, but when he had seen him set up what was obviously an ambush site, alarm bells had sounded inside his head and he had left the Hub to come and join him. He'd arrived in time to see Ianto locked in combat with the Weevils and his first impulse to join in had been pushed aside in silent admiration as he had watched an almost unrecognisable Ianto show a grasp of fighting skills that left him breathless. The arrival of the last Weevil had taken him by surprise almost as much as Ianto but he had managed to shoot it before it could make a killing strike.
Now he had to figure out a way to deal with this new situation. It was blindingly obvious that this wasn't the first time that Ianto had done this, and the willingness to leave at the correct time was now explained. What was still a mystery was why Ianto had suddenly taken to doing this, and Jack realised that he was going to have to have a serious talk with him in the immediate future. That proved to be more difficult than Jack had expected. When he walked over to join Ianto, he found that he had opened the back of the van and dragged out six body bags, plus what looked like a cleaning kit. Jack tried to take the latter away and got something very like a warning growl for his trouble. He sighed.
"Ianto-"
"I clean up the sites. You wouldn't know where to start."
Jack took in the half-dazed look in Ianto's eyes and swallowed the angry retort that threatened. Besides, it had had just enough truth in it to sting. "Maybe not, but I figure I know how to get a Weevil into a body-bag," he pointed out. "I'll do that and you can do the technical stuff. Deal?"
He got a jerk of the good shoulder that he took to be an agreement. Jack was loading the third Weevil when he heard a sound and turned to see Ianto crumpled on the ground. He got to him in a matter of seconds and checked him anxiously. It looked like he had passed out, and Jack assumed that it was probably shock from his wounds. His pulse was strong and the bleeding had already stopped, but Jack knew that the wounds would need seeing to as soon as possible. He got the other Weevils into the back of the van as quickly as possible, then looked around the site and decided to leave it. There was still blood but rain was promised for later on tonight and if anything was found, they would probably assume that it was the result of some drunks fighting.
They got back to the Hub in record time and Jack carried Ianto inside and up to the small infirmary where he laid him out on one of the two beds. He'd pulled off the heavy leather jacket and started to pull at the dark grey t-shirt underneath when he was stopped by a hand on his wrist and he realised that Ianto was awake again.
"I can take care of myself," Ianto said shortly, shoving Jack's hand away.
Jack staggered back then recovered and came back to grab Ianto by the chin as he struggled to sit up on the bed, forcing him to meet his own angry gaze. "You only have one good arm and the other one is stiffening up. You can't afford to let infection set in."
"Then I'll go to A&E," Ianto snapped. "It won't be the first time."
Jack did his best to throttle back the frustrated anger he was feeling. "Why run that risk, for God's sake? I'm perfectly capable of carrying out basic stuff like this and Owen can check you out in the morning-"
"I don't want you touching me!" It came out as an explosive shout as Ianto shoved at him again.
For a moment Jack was tempted to shout back, but then he got a look at the turmoil in Ianto's eyes and something clicked inside. He smiled lazily, laughing inwardly at the cautious look that immediately earned him, and moved in to pin Ianto back down on to the bed. He doubted that he would have been able to do it if Ianto hadn't been under par and hurting, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He leaned in until his face was inches away from Ianto's.
"Nervous, Ianto? Now why wouldn't you want me to touch you, hmm? Is it because you can't trust yourself?"
He had his lips so close that he was almost brushing them against Ianto's. Another centimetre and they would be kissing. He remembered the first time he had kissed Ianto, in the red-tinted darkness of the Hub in lockdown, after Lisa had tried to kill him. He remembered the second time, after the cannibals, when he had surprised himself by discovering he had a conscience where this man was concerned. He wasn't sure if he should count the time when Ianto had seduced him for his own reasons and then retconned him, never realising that Jack had regained his memories a short time afterwards, but he wanted to, oh yes. All three times he treasured, far more than he expected to, but he was becoming increasingly obsessed with the need for Ianto to kiss him in full awareness of what he was doing, with no agenda beyond the desire to do so.
Jack could feel the electricity that was building between the two of them. Hell, a ten-day old corpse would have been able to feel it. Every inch of Jack's body was sensitised to the feel of Ianto against him, and the urge to press himself forward that last hairsbreadth of distance and feel those lips against his was nigh-on overwhelming. For a flickering second he saw it; the same hunger flaring into life deep inside Ianto's eyes, blazing up out of nothing like a supernova. Then it was gone again and Ianto's eyes were their usual shuttered ice as he turned his head to one side and shoved again at Jack's chest.
"I don't want you touching me because you're the bastard who had my girlfriend executed," he said in a tight voice. "And the only person I don't trust around here is you!"
Jack gave ground with a laugh that was completely genuine. "Lying to yourself, Ianto? That's not very healthy. If you weren't so scared of losing control you'd let me treat you, but you want me so bad you don't dare let me near you even when you're battered and bruised."
"That isn't true!" Ianto said furiously.
"Then prove it," Jack challenged. "Let me treat those wounds."
Ianto glared at him. "You are so bloody transparent," he growled. "I'm supposed to rise to the bait now, aren't I, and let you treat me to prove a point. Well don't hold your breath." He started to ease himself off the bed, then hunched over with a hiss of pain.
Jack reached out hastily to support him. "Hey, come on, let me help you," he said seriously. "No ulterior motives, okay? The quicker those wounds get seen to, the better."
For a moment Ianto hesitated, but the gouges must have been hurting more than he was letting on because after a minute he nodded and settled back on the bed. Jack wasted no time in stripping off the t-shirt, giving a small sound of sympathy when he saw the messy wounds. Maybe they weren't serious, but they had to be painful as hell. He started on the arm, murmuring an apology as he cleaned the gouges. He could feel Ianto trembling slightly under his hands, but he didn't say anything, turning his head away so that Jack couldn't catch his eye.
"We still need to talk about why you were out there," Jack eventually said. "You were taking a stupid risk and I want to know what justification you thought you had."
Ianto gave him a sideways look. "I told you; I wasn't expecting there to be six of them. Weevils are usually solitary hunters but when they form a pack it's usually no more than three, a dominant female and two males. This was different," he continued, frowning. "Maybe it was because it was a rich hunting ground we hadn't found they were using. I still need to find out so much more about them." He shook his head, then swallowed a gasp as Jack's hand tightened unconsciously on his arm.
"Hunting Weevils is our job, Ianto," Jack said tightly. "I thought you said you didn’t want to go out into the field after the cannibals?" He could see the flicker of anger in Ianto's eyes even at this angle.
"I believe you'll find that my exact wording was that I had no further desire to go out into the field with the Team, sir," he said evenly. "That decision still stands. I work better on my own."
"And to hell with my orders?"
This time he got a full-on level look before Ianto looked away again. "I have never disobeyed a direct order from you, sir, apart from the one where you ordered me to kill Lisa."
Jack did his best to hide his flinch. That had not been one of his finer moments, telling Ianto to go and murder the woman he had risked everything, even his own life, for. It had been an impossible order, which was something he had realised very soon afterwards, which was why he had led the Team back into the Hub. He'd half expected to discover that Lisa had killed Ianto, and the thought had been a cold knife in his heart that had cut through the rage and sense of betrayal. Instead he'd found a scene right out of an over-the-top horror movie, which he and the Team had then added to by shooting the Frankenstein Lisa, even though a moment's thought would have told them that she was no longer any danger, since she had abandoned her lethal form to become a slender human female that was hardly in a state to wreak havoc. Yes, he could firmly put that entire fiasco under the column of 'Really Bad Days When Jack Was An Idiot'.
He cleared his throat. "And if I ordered you never to go out unaccompanied again?" That earned him a thin smile.
"It would make my job of clearing up after you extremely difficult, sir."
Jack wanted to curse but knew that Ianto would see that as a victory. This man had a genius for discovering and making use of loopholes. He decided on a more subtle revenge. "Take off your trousers." That got him a reaction, as Ianto turned his head to give him a startled look. Jack was almost certain that there was a hint of interest under the astonishment, but if there was it was shielded almost immediately. "The gouges in your side go down past the waistband," he explained, not bothering to hide his smile. "You need to drop your trousers so I can do a thorough job."
Ianto had already recovered his poise. "I have no doubt that you do some of your most thorough jobs whenever trousers are dropped, sir."
"Ohhh, that's a line worthy of any bitchy drag-queen," Jack said in amusement, and laughed when he saw the flash of annoyed anger in Ianto's eyes. His laughter faded as he got a good look at the slash marks in Ianto's side. "You could have been killed!"
"I could get killed at any moment in time, sir," Ianto returned calmly. "It could be something as mundane as being run over by a bus or something as bizarre as being eaten by an alien plant. There are no guarantees in life."
"That still doesn't mean you can walk around with eyes shut and a bull's-eye strapped to your back!" Jack shot back. "Here, lie down. I'm going to do a deep cleanse on these."
Ianto did as he was told after a momentary hesitation and Jack set to work, frowning in concentration and being as gentle as he could be. There was a long moment of silence that Ianto suddenly broke.
"I went out on a routine clean-up about a week before we went to Brynblaidd. I heard someone - a woman - screaming, but by the time I got there it was too late and two Weevils had pulled her down. She was critically injured and I couldn't do anything but sit with her while she died. She was nothing like Lisa, but it felt exactly the same," he continued bitterly. "I wasn't quick enough, clever enough, competent enough, and someone was dying in my arms."
Jack opened his mouth, hesitated and then closed it again. Better to wait and see where this was going.
"She was just another homeless girl working the streets. She had heroin tracks up and down her arms and she was nothing but skin and bones. It took me nearly two weeks to find out her name and where she had come from. Sophie Margaret Davies from Wrexham. Father and mother both pillars of the community, apart from the fact that Dad liked a little bit of young meat in his bed every now and then and Mum looked the other way in order to keep him."
Jack sighed. "Makes you proud to be human sometimes, doesn't it?"
Ianto growled something inarticulate. "She came to Cardiff to make something of herself and she wound up dying on the streets at the claws of monsters and there was no-one around to care. She'd have wound up in a pauper's grave with no headstone."
"You paid for her to be buried?" Again he got that almost-shrug.
"Couldn't bury Lisa, so I might as well spend the money on something. Nothing fancy but she has a name on her headstone and I put flowers down."
"So you went hunting the Weevils for revenge?"
"Don't be daft, I'd already killed the Weevils that had taken her," Ianto said scornfully. "It got me thinking, though, and I started to take a closer look at the sites and I realised that the Weevils take a lot more humans than the figures show, but since they're largely down-and-outs or prostitutes, no-one's really noticed."
"So why didn't you come to me and tell me all of this?" Jack demanded.
Ianto snorted. "I did. I put everything in a report, with statistics, probable hunting grounds, patterns of behaviour and requested that we start doing something about it. You sent the report back with 'not worth the manpower' scrawled in the margin."
Jack blinked. "I did?" He struggled to remember the report in question but for the life of him he couldn't recall it. "Well, okay, but I was probably right. We're stretched thin enough as it is without making that kind of commitment for fairly small returns." He felt the body underneath his hands stiffen.
"People are dying, Captain. They're dying a nasty death with no-one caring that they've gone. I might not walk around with my heart pinned quite so ostentatiously to my sleeve as Gwen does, but that doesn't mean I don't care! These are my people. This is my city! Have you finished yet?"
Jack sighed and stood back. "Yeah, I've finished. I just need to get the gel on it and put a dressing in place, but I'll want Owen to see it tomorrow in case a few of those wounds need more attention." He finished off quickly, relieved that they had the advantage of more advanced medical techniques than the outside world. The wound gel he was using was courtesy of the Rift and would promote healing without a scar. Once he had finished, he stepped away again and watched as Ianto pulled up his trousers and put the t-shirt back on. "Go home, Ianto."
"I have Weevils to dispose of first," Ianto pointed out.
"Fine," Jack said in exasperation. "We'll do it together and then you'll go home."
It didn't take them long to throw the Weevils into the alien incinerator they had in one of the lower floors. On one level, Jack felt a faint unease about disposing of the aliens like that, since the jury was still out on how intelligent they were and he had met too many alien races to not know that most of them took the disposal of their dead every bit as seriously as Humans did. On a more practical level, however, there was no way of finding out how Weevils treated their dead, although there were indications that they did have some kind of burial ritual. Unfortunately they had to be practical, so the Weevils they had to kill went into the alien fire. A little to his embarrassment, however, Jack usually found himself silently mouthing one of the more general funerary invocations whenever he was doing it.
Ianto hesitated before turning to leave for the final time. "Are you going to forbid me to go out?" he demanded.
Jack sighed. "I need to think about this. We'll talk about it later. For now, go home and rest. And that is a direct unequivocal order, Ianto."
After a moment, Ianto nodded. "Yes, sir."
After he'd left, Jack went back up to his office and then down into his room. Lying down on his bed, he tried to figure out how he was going to handle this current crisis. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, however, his mind kept going back to the sight of Ianto fighting the Weevils. Dressed in leathers that were moulded to his body and moving in graceful, lethal moves, he had been a hot dream come to life. Jack groaned as he felt himself harden. It seemed as though every time he turned around, Ianto was unwittingly increasing his potential and desirability in Jack's eyes, and the icing on the cake was that the Welshman was very obviously fighting his own desire to jump Jack's bones. Unfortunately, he was winning that particular battle most of the time, which meant that Jack had to find other ways of relieving his sexual frustration.
Jack considered his options. There would probably be several clubs still open that he could hit in search of a willing bed-warmer. The only problem was that none of them had a chance in hell of chasing away the all-too-clear image of a leather-clad Ianto full of fire and lethal passion. With a sigh, Jack unzipped his trousers and took himself in hand, closing his eyes and thinking of all that passion re-channelled and in his bed. It was going to be a frustrating night....
OOO
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
Jack looked up as Ianto gave a perfunctory knock on the door and walked into his office. "How are you feeling today?" he asked.
Ianto shrugged carefully. "Uncomfortable, but I'll live. Owen says that none of the wounds need stitching and the wound gel will take care of any scarring. I'm still fit for duty, Captain."
"You're passed fit for your normal, standard duties, Ianto, but I don't want you to consider doing any of your extra-curricular activities until those wounds are completely healed. Am I making myself clear?"
Ianto was giving him an odd look. "And after that, sir? Am I right in assuming that I can continue?"
Jack gave him a cool smile. "You can continue under the proviso that every time you feel the urge to go out, you come to me and tell me." He paused. "And then we'll go out together."
Ianto stiffened. "I don't need-"
"I don't need to find that one of my people got himself killed in a back alley somewhere while my back was turned," Jack said with finality. "That's the condition. Take it or leave it." He held his breath and crossed his fingers.
After a moment, Ianto nodded. "Very well, sir. I accept your condition."
Jack smiled in relief. "Good. Let me know when you're ready to start training again and I'll set aside some time."
Ianto had been about to leave but he paused and gave Jack a puzzled look. "Sir?"
Jack kept his face impassive with an effort. "Training. If we're going to start going out together, we're going to have to learn one another's moves." He almost smiled at the alarmed look Ianto gave him, but he kept his face straight. "Not that I saw anything to complain about last night, but it's always best to be on the safe side."
"Um, yes, sir," Ianto said before leaving with more haste than his usual grace.
Once he was certain Ianto was safely out of earshot, Jack allowed himself the luxury of a wicked laugh.
OOO
Ianto took a deep breath and tried to tell himself that he wasn't nervous. He did a lousy job of it. In about five minutes, Jack Harkness would be walking in through the door to the practice room he was in and his life was going to get even more complicated than it already was. And really, what with working for a top-secret, alien-hunting organisation, recovering from the repercussions of unleashing his insane, cyber girlfriend on his Team and endangering the Earth, concealing the fact that he was half-alien from everyone while trying to also stymie any attempts that Torchwood made to track down and capture the Doctor, he didn't need any further problems. Especially when the problem was over six foot of physical perfection, with the charisma of a lamia and the sexual appetite of a succubus.
Ianto groaned. He really wasn't helping matters by thinking such thoughts! He should be focusing on the fact that Harkness was a lethal enigma who could smile and flirt with him one moment and then turn around and kill him without so much as a sigh of regret. Ianto had seen the depths of rage and betrayal that Jack could hold, and the great mystery about the affair with Lisa was why Ianto was still alive and in his right mind, rather than a corpse in the Bay or retconned into bovine contentment behind a till at Tesco's.
Captain Jack Harkness was an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle and enamelled with enough charm and personal magnetism to satisfy ten normal men. He was intelligent, witty, focused, charismatic, kind, generous, considerate and athletic. He was also as hard and glittering as a perfectly faceted diamond, lethal, unforgiving, calculating and occasionally boorish. There was always a latent deadliness about him, like a wolf playing at domesticity but with that glint of the wild always in its eyes. He ticked boxes Ianto hadn't even realised were on his list and the urge to drag the man into his bed and act out all the fantasies that haunted those sleeping hours that weren't soaked in blood and screams was getting more and more difficult to silence.
He didn't need this! Dear God, Lisa had been dead for little more than three months. What sort of shallow bastard was he, that he should be wishing that her murderer would take him to his bed? If he were a Catholic, he would never be out of the confessional and the priest would be hard put to put a number on the Hail Mary's he would have to say. Not that God would need to do anything if Jack ever found out that Ianto had one more lie hidden deep inside himself. Given the way that the Captain had reacted to having a Cyberman hidden in his base, Ianto dreaded to think what he would do if he found that the man he had allowed to live after that debacle was only half-human himself.
Shivering, Ianto started to do some warm-up exercises to take his mind off the way his thoughts were spiralling out of control. He normally had better focus than this, but recent events had been piling on the pressure and his control over his empathic abilities was becoming erratic. He still hadn't regained his centre after the events at Brynblaidd. At the time he could explain it away as being the result of the mild concussion he had received at the hands of the cannibals, not to mention the 'tenderising' that had happened afterwards, but he was still having trouble in blocking out the needs and demands of the others and it was playing hell with his attempt to keep aloof and invisible.
Ianto's heart shot up into his throat as the door opened and Jack walked in. How the hell did the man make loose jogging bottoms and a t-shirt look like a designer one-off? Ianto was despairingly aware of the way his pulse had already started to accelerate into a tango-rhythm at the mere sight of the other man. The way Jack's eyes travelled up and down him with that gleam in his eye, and the way he licked his lips and grinned left Ianto torn between wanting to smack his teeth down his throat and ramming him up against the nearest wall while he kissed him senseless.
"So are we going to train or are you going to give in to my irresistible charm and let me drag you to the nearest bed?" Jack asked with a grin.
He already has a hard-on, Ianto noted with something suspiciously close to an hysterical giggle threatening to surface. This was going to be frustrating as hell.
OOO
Three weeks on and they had started to fall into a kind of rhythm. The fun part was that the others - that crack team of experts and geniuses - remained supremely unaware of what was going on right under their noses. By day Ianto was still the man who made the coffee, kept them fed, made sure the Hub didn't disappear under a tide of mess and also made maintaining the Archives, keeping a lid on any problems and monitoring the outside world for any kickback from alien activity look so easy that the others didn't even think about it being done in the first place.
Once the others had gone home, though....
Jack gave a sigh of satisfaction as they got back to the Hub. Another successful hunting expedition, with seven Weevils under their belt. Either the alien hunters were getting warier or the combined team of Jack and Ianto had frightened them off, but the attacks on the homeless definitely seemed to be tapering off. Which was a shame, because that meant he soon might not have the excuse to come out with Ianto, and that was something he was beginning to look forward to with even more anticipation than he had originally thought. There was something intensely refreshing in working with someone who didn't feel the need to argue every little decision that he made, or who always wanted an explanation of why they were doing a certain thing.
Not that Ianto didn't have his moments, but when he did, it was invariably for a reason. And God, he could fight! Jack realised that making him use a gun in the field was the worst thing he could have done, since Ianto was very obviously not as used to one as he was his knives. And just where the hell had he learned to use those with such consummate skill? Some spying meant that Jack already knew that Ianto was half-alien and had spent some of his childhood off-world, but there was something teasingly familiar about some of the moves he used that had Jack wishing that he could just sit down with Ianto, tell him that he knew about his alien heritage and could they just talk? The trouble with that idea was that Ianto was already so spooked around Jack that finding out that Jack knew his greatest secret would probably result in his making a run for it. And one thing that Jack was very certain of was that he didn't want Ianto to do that.
Jack had insisted that they train together so he could be certain that they wouldn't fall over one another in the field. He'd even managed to convince himself that that had been the only motive, right up until the first few sessions. It had taken the entire first session to get Ianto to calm down enough to even think about sparring with Jack. He seemed to have a serious inhibition about using his fighting talents against another human being, even in a training situation, but when Jack had taxed him on it, he had just shrugged and said that his godfather had not approved. That mysterious godfather, who had raised Ianto and his sister after his father had murdered Ianto's mother. Jack really wanted to know about him, as well, but he couldn't find a casual way of mentioning that, hey, he sort of accidentally bugged Ianto when he'd been talking to his sister and found out all this neat stuff and how about another cup of coffee? Jack pulled a face, reflecting that sometimes he could be too clever for his own good.
Still, they were a little further along the path that Jack wanted them to be on, although he couldn't say that Ianto was any more relaxed in his presence. Out in the field was a different thing. Ianto dropped into an entirely different mindset out there; one that secretly delighted Jack. Confident without being cocky, obedient without being deferential, willing to listen but just as firm in voicing an opinion if he thought it was a valid one. Jack just wished he could figure out a way of getting Ianto to keep that part of his personality switched on 24/7, rather than becoming the bloody tea-boy every time one of the Team was around.
The weird thing was that Jack was having the time of his life. He had a long-term project to keep his Machiavellian streak happy, he was constantly amused by the sight and sound of Ianto running proverbial rings around his oblivious Team, and in the night he had the pleasure of going out with a transformed Ianto who was increasingly forgetting that he and Jack were supposed to be bitter enemies. The cherry on the top of all this would be when Jack finally managed to get Ianto into his bed as an eager, participating partner, and he didn't think that would take much longer. Jack was a master at the art of seduction and the training sessions he was insisting they had were escalating the sexual tension between them nicely, to the point where Jack had very nearly pinned Ianto to the floor last time and had him there and then.
I'm a bloody masochist, there's no other explanation for it, Jack decided, watching Ianto lean into the van to grab something. His hand moved almost of its own volition, reaching out to caress the leather-clad arse and squeeze gently. Ianto swore and pulled out of the van and swung around to face him, batting away the offending hand.
"You just can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?" he demanded furiously.
Jack grinned wryly. "Come on, the fact that I haven't jumped you already proves that I'm a candidate for sainthood!" He ran his eyes up and down Ianto's length and ran his tongue over lips that were suddenly dry. "God, what I'd love to do to you..."
Ianto snorted and shoved at him angrily. "You have a one-track mind and that's centred on your bloody cock," he said scornfully.
Jack recovered his balance and grinned brashly as he pounced playfully and dragged Ianto forward so that their hips ground together. "Can I help it if my cock has such good ideas that my common sense gets outvoted?" he teased.
He was going to say some more witty things, but he decided against it. This was probably because that instead of pushing him away again, Ianto had wrapped his arms around him and was kissing him passionately. In fact kissing was a bit of a misnomer, since it felt more like he was trying to eat Jack alive. Never one to be slow on the uptake, Jack was quick to reciprocate, his hands going around to cup Ianto's buttocks and pull him even closer. He found deliciously incontrovertible proof that Ianto was more than interested and he lost no time in getting the leather jacket and t-shirt off him. Ianto was no slouch as well, although Jack was amused to hear the swearing over the amount of layers he was wearing.
"It's more fun taking them off," he confided in a conspiratorial whisper, then yelped as Ianto bit down on his shoulder and growled something that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary in Welsh. "Okay, so maybe it's a little frustrating if you're in a hurry-" He broke off with a gasp as Ianto got his trousers undone and reached inside his pants to grasp his hard-on. "Oh wow, okay, let's see about catching up with you," he managed.
It wasn't anywhere near the most accomplished seduction he had made, Jack reflected. His clothes were only partially off, since Ianto seemed less interested in getting him naked as exposing his cock so he could get at it. Jack's coat, shirt and vest had been dragged off and his trousers and pants shoved down to his knees, but once that was accomplished, Ianto pushed Jack back up against the van and started to thrust against him. Jack had managed to strip Ianto to more of less the same state of undress but rapidly lost interest in taking it further when he felt the cool metal of the van against his back and then the gorgeous hot hardness of Ianto's cock against his own. He thrust back almost mindlessly, groaning at the waves of pleasure jolting through him with every thrust.
Ianto was kissing and biting him with equal ferocity. There was an element of aggression to it that was totally unlike his normal unflappable cool and Jack found such loss of control to be deeply erotic. Jack claimed Ianto's mouth in a deep, passionate kiss, then yelped as Ianto bit down on his lower lip. He retaliated with a nip to the earlobe and grinned at the deep shudder that passed through Ianto in response.
They couldn't keep up such a pace for long, as sexual tensions that had been simmering between them for months were suddenly released. Jack felt Ianto stiffen against him a few seconds before he felt the wild surge of his own release start to boil up inside him. They clung to one another as they shuddered their way through the climax and the aftershocks, the support of the van the only thing helping them stay on their feet.
After a while Jack felt his mind start to grope its way out of the satiated fog it was in. He grinned at the mental image of the sight they must be, both clinging to one another against the van, with their trousers down around their ankles and their combined cum all over their upper bodies. He would have to make sure that the CCTV footage was safely removed so no-one could catch what they had been up to. He felt Ianto stirring against him and leaned forward to kiss him, frowning when Ianto pulled away.
"So I take it that you're not going to respect me in the morning, then?" he asked lightly to cover his disappointment.
Ianto was shaking his head. "This was a mistake," he muttered. He pushed himself away from Jack and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Duw, look at the mess."
Jack laughed and kept leaning against the van. "I'm liking what I see," he said in amusement, although that faded as he watched Ianto pull up his trousers and then hunt around in the van for some wipes. "Ianto..." he said, reaching for the other man.
"Leave it," Ianto said, evading Jack's touch as he finished cleaning himself up and tossing the packet of wipes in his direction. "I'll get started on the Weevils," he continued as he reached down to pick up his t-shirt and pull it on.
Jack watched him revert back to his normal reserved self, with no trace of the passionate creature of a few moments ago. After a moment he sighed and pulled out some wipes to clean himself off. "Say the word and I'll never lay a finger on you again," he said quietly.
Ianto snorted. "You, keep your fingers to yourself? That'll be a first." He started to pull out the first Weevil, then paused, staring down at the dead alien. "I don't pretend to understand what it is about you that makes me act the way I just did. I should hate you. Some days I do still hate you. Other times..." He lifted his gaze to give Jack a troubled look. "I don't love you. Sometimes I even despise you and your flippancy. Then there are days when being around you makes me so crazy that all I can think about is dragging you off somewhere and screwing you senseless." He paused and rubbed at his forehead, looking troubled and tired. "This has to be some kind of weird phase, like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, and I'll get through it like everything else. So don't go thinking there'll be a repeat of what just happened here," he finished warningly.
Jack lifted his hands and did his best to look innocent. It would probably have worked better if he'd got his trousers up off the floor first, but he gave it his best shot. "I wouldn't presume to think anything of the kind," he said. He waited until Ianto had turned his attention back to the Weevil before continuing. "Although I still have some pretty good ideas as to what I'd like to do to you!"
He grinned as Ianto let him know in no uncertain terms what he thought of that idea. So maybe he hadn't got as far with Ianto as he might have liked to believe. He'd still made it past first base, and he had several game plans he could still work on. Whether he liked it or not, Ianto Jones had become Jack's newest and most fascinating hobby, and if there was one thing Jack was certain of, it was that Ianto was going to be a very rewarding obsession.
OOOO